Lost. The infusion of rhyme is very strong, nearly two rhymed lines to every one of blank verse; but incomparably the noblest passage in the play, the great speech of Berowne in Act iii. (3. 289–365) is throughout in blank verse, with only one pair of rhymes (297, 98); the poet even forbears to end the speech with the usual jingling couplet. It would be unsafe to found any argument on Henry VI., II.1 and III., but passing on to Romeo and Juliet, of which the first draft was written, perhaps, somewhere about 1591, we find that although rhyme, especially alternate rhyme, still holds its ground, yet the 'quality of the scenes chiefly written in blank verse is far higher than that of the rhyming passages.' The quotation is from Professor Dowden, and no one would readily dissent from the opinion expressed in it. To think of Romeo and Juliet is to think primarily of the two scenes that are the crown of the poet's lyrical tragedy; they are of course the garden scene, ii. 2, and the balcony scene, iii. 5. Both are in blank verse of wonderful fluency and sweetness. Looking therefore at these five plays at the three comedies, at the historical play, and at his earliest tragedy, I do not think we are justified in saying that Shakspere definitely represented the school opposed to Marlowe. It would I believe be nearer the truth to suppose that he perceived here ‘a divided duty,' that instinct was

1 Cf. however, Fleay, Shakespeare Manual, 32, 33.

2 Cf. Swinburne, Study of Shakespeare, p. 35.

of!

leading him towards adoption of the metre from which Marlowe, be it noted, had never swerved, while tradition and conservatism kept him faithful in a measure to the old system. There are two other important plays on the list, Richard III. and Richard II.

After reading the criticisms of various writers— and still more-after reading the plays themselves, I cannot doubt that Richard III. is the earlier work. The two dramas raise one of the questions, where the metrical test conflicts with the æsthetic. But in such cases the internal evidence of style and treatment cannot be neglected; some special explanation of the metrical peculiarity must, if possible, be sought for, and the principle can be applied here. In all respects but one, Richard II. is a far finer play than Richard III. The latter, however, is written in blank verse; the former contains much rhyme. But there is a special reason why blank verse should preponderate in Richard III. In that play Shakspere was writing altogether on the lines of Marlowe; his treatment of the subject, apart from the metre, strongly reflects the influence of his friend. In all probability they had been working together at the revision of Henry VI., Parts II. and III., and it is clearly to that group, dealing with the fortunes of the House of York, that Richard III. belongs. Shakspere in contributing his share to Parts II. and III. had been guided by Marlowe's example, and we may fairly assume that in

rounding off the series he would keep to the method employed in the first two dramas of what is really a trilogy of plays.

In the same way it is not unnatural to suppose that in writing Richard II. Shakspere, being removed from the immediate influence of his friend who had died in 1593, would at times slip back into the old channel. And even in Richard II. his instinct is true as ever. The superb speech of Gaunt (ii. 1. 31—68), 1 is not profaned by the jingle of any rhyme; the vigorous speeches of York in the same scene are equally rhymeless (163-185 and 186-208); similarly the great soliloquy of Richard in the fifth act is all in blank verse, and generally throughout the play the poet rarely in the best parts falls back into rhyme. It is in the first scene where, like the eagle in Horace, he is getting ready for a flight, that rhyme runs riot, and again in the fifth act, scene 3, where it makes desperate struggles to hold its ground. For the rest the poet can write vigorous and varied blank verse, until in King John rhyme has perceptibly decreased to 150 lines in a total of 2403; afterwards it steadily declined, as Mr Fleay's table shows, until in the Tempest there are but two rhymed lines, in the Winter's Tale, not one. At times, of course, Shakspere employed it even in his greatest plays, but always for some special object. In Othello for instance, as Professor Dowden points out, in Act iii. 2. 210-220, the bitterness of Brabantio's reply to the

Duke's frigid commonplaces is immeasurably heightened by the rhymed parody of the cold comfort offered to him, 'the vacant chaff well-meant for grain;' and other instances might be quoted.

This blank verse question is obviously one of great importance, and if I might summarise my impressions I should say that the credit of having created blank verse belongs not to Shakspereassuredly not to Norton and Sackville, but absolutely to Christopher Marlowe - that there were when Shakspere came up to London as a playwright two dramatic schools, engaged in a fierce struggle over the question of rhymed or unrhymed compositionsthat Marlowe, the author of blank verse, was the recognized leader of the blank verse party, while Greene perhaps was his most distinguished opponent on the other side-that Shakspere did not definitely join either school, but preserved for a time an ambiguous attitude, poetic instinct leading him to adopt blank verse as the most natural vehicle of dramatic expression, while tradition, inexperience and perhaps personal sympathies made him adhere to the old rhymed system-that in his earlier plays we can trace the struggle of these two motives, the more serious and reflective parts of his work being written as a rule in blank verse, the higher and less earnest in rhyme— that somewhere about the time of the composition of the original draft of his first tragedy Romeo and Juliet, where the quality of the scenes in blank verse

is markedly superior to the general level of the scenes in rhyme, he became associated with Marlowe in the revision of the earlier sketches of Henry VI., Parts II. and III.—that while still working under the influence of Marlowe's style he produced Richard III., in which blank verse is for the time triumphant-that after the death of Marlowe he wrote Richard II., and in the scenes which on general æsthetic grounds must be placed on a lower level than the body of the work, relapsed into the old groove, that the ground lost in Richard II. was quickly recovered in King John, and the battle finally won in the Trilogy of Henry IV. Parts II. and III. (1597), and Henry V. (1599), in favour of blank verse. Whether, if Marlowe had not preceded Shakspere the latter would have attained to his perfect mastery over blank verse, or would only partially have developed the resources of the metre, or, again, would never have broken the fetters of rhyme at all these are questions which it is useless to ask, because impossible to answer. We need not waste time in theorising on a subject where the most "exquisite reason" must of necessity be purely subjective, and therefore valueless. There is only the one bare fact, that with the force of Marlowe's example to influence him, Shakspere for some time was at least unwilling to give up the familiar rhyme; from this each will deduce his own conclusions.

I said that there was one other point in which Shakspere was strongly affected by the work of his